"What an inconvenient character to possess," said Mr. Heath. "It is fortunate for my people that I am not of that sort. Fancy my spending weeks shut up sermonizing, and then forsaking that sort of work, and taking to visiting; and then staying both employments and falling to reading."
"Why, I don't know that it would be so much amiss," said Laura. "You could make up a batch of sermons when the mood was on you, and that care off your mind you could wander round your parish at your own sweet will, and then, as you would have written and talked yourself out, you might, very properly, read yourself up again."
"There's no use in discussing Margaret," said Mrs. Grey. "You can't, any of you, possibly understand her, in this short time."
"But I see no complications or contradictions in her," said Mr. Heath; "and if there are none, why should we not understand her? What I should say of her is this: she is a shy, rather awkward, undeveloped girl, very young in her feelings, and so preferring the society of children to that of grown persons, and will, one of these days, make somebody a nice sort of a wife."
"Oh, you men!" repeated Belle, "you can't see through mill-stones when they have holes in them."
"If you mean by that, that I can't read a feminine at a glance, of course you are right."
"It provokes me to think Harry has so little discrimination," said Laura, "that he might have married a dozen girls whom he would have adored as much as he does me. Men are so queer. They fall in love to-day with black eyes, and are sure they shall never think of any other maidens. And then, tomorrow, its all 'blue eyes, of course.' The fact is, marriage is a mere lottery."
"Oh, for shame, Laura," said Belle; "I am sure Harry never could have been happy without you. You were made for each other. However, you were not in earnest; you never are, so what's the use of arguing with you?"
"Well," returned Laura, "it makes me feel so flat when Cyril reads such a girl as Margaret superficially. Why, that girl is a genius."